[Fish Sandwich]

I knew I was in for a real treat of an episode the moment they deliberately didn't put the Japanese subtitles for Zero's first line. It stuck out especially because the scene right before that which establishes the basic premise likewise consciously chooses to do so in English, as if specifically reminding you how the rule for that works before it's broken. And sure enough, it's broken there for a particular purpose, in that it's another plot thread in a ZEZTZ episode where the answer is given to the audience before the question, obscured mostly by the lack of immediate context.

I think the way that reveal ends up playing out is *crazy* slick in its delivery. Like, before even talking about the narrative value of it or anything, just how it's cut together at the very end and the flow of the dialogue and everything is fantastic. I love that there isn't actually a specific line from Baku that quite hits that note of really spelling out what he's realizing as he's realizing it? It's tricky for me to describe the nuance exactly, but it's almost like the scene skips over doing the most obvious part in a way that I felt made it a lot more subtle and neat. (Plus, rhyming the father/son conversation with a mother/daughter one was also cute.)

The delivery in general is definitely the thing I can praise most this week. It's another Kamihoriuchi episode, and the whole time I was watching it, it was really driving home for me how blessed we are as Rider fans to have this guy as a director? There's such strong intent behind so many little things, something about ZEZTZ in general that I think I'm going to end up longing for when we move on to some other show that might not put the same level of care into things like the tiniest bits of body language in a scene. And the stuff that's more flashy and in your face, I mean, I'm definitely going to miss fight scenes that get to do all these weird transitions and cuts that can only make sense because this is a show where the fights take place in dreams.

All that, and the story they're telling is itself another one I'm especially excited about. Zero has always been a particularly fun character to watch for me, so the escalation of the plot forcing him and Baku to sort out their past and determine their future and all that, of course I'm going to be interested in where that's all heading. My mind was being blown in real-time here as Fujimi starting pitching the idea that all of Baku's accidents might be a result of somebody else's bad dreams. Again, it's just a lot of fun to watch play out, as is stuff like a Nightmare ZEZTZ that sort of plays with viewer expectations if you're a fan who might assume, much like Baku, that you're looking at Zero as some kinda Proto ZEZTZ at first. Because this is another two-parter about unraveling Baku's secret past with CODE, this will be pretty much exactly the same praise I just gave 29, but I really like how much the episode sorts out for you by the end while still having this sense that there's a deeper, more critical layer to some of the elements that's like, right there, in all our faces, but still isn't being said out loud quite yet.